New Kid is a story about the challenges of middle school life and Jordan’s continuously evolving identities. He grapples with questions like “Who am I?”, “Why am I me?”, “What is important to me?”, and “Who will I be?” Can you identify moments in the story where Jordan seems to be wrestling with his multiple identities? Jordan is many things and his identity is not static, despite the social pressures that make it feel that way. Our own identities are multiple and evolving. In a notebook, draw a “Cultural X-Ray” of yourself, in which you label the outside of your body with aspects of your culture that are evident to others, such as language, age, ethnicity, gender, and religion, and the inside with the values and beliefs that you hold in your heart.